“Buried in the craziness of the Trump news cycle is the fact that the National Flood Insurance Program expires on Friday. My forthcoming @PSJ_Editor article on NFIP explains the fraught politics of this important but troubled policy:” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/psj.12189

Canyon Gate’s dilemma lays bare a defining feature of coastal life in a time of climate change: Many of the neighborhoods where we already live should never have been built in the first place, and doubling down on reconstruction could make the consequences of the next disaster much more severe. But doubling down is what speculators do, and — at least in the short term — they are profiting from their efforts.

National Flood Insurance Is Underwater Because of Outdated ScienceThe FEMA program will continue to be financially unviable until it uses the latest research to help fix its broken system

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The National Flood Insurance Program, which covers some 5.2 million property holders in the U.S., was slated to get a badly needed overhaul today. The Senate’s task—which includes hammering out reforms that address the changing math of flood risk—has already been pushed back three times since November. Yet lawmakers still have not compromised on how to fix a broken system, so a reauthorization of the NFIP will almost certainly be punted again, to July 31....From Wahl’s perspective, “the biggest gap is the fact that FEMA’s maps do not connect inland flooding and coastal flooding,” he says. “FEMA creates a flat map from the river side of things and a flat map from the storm surge side of things, and they just overlay them, which assumes that these two things are completely independent. But most tropical storms bring a lot of rain and storm surges. We understand why these events happen simultaneously, but what we haven’t done is include that information into risk assessments,” Wahl notes. ...

The flood control district in the Houston area is considering a proposal to build massive underground tunnels to drain floodwaters from bayous across the county.

Harris County Flood Control District officials said the idea could be a bold answer following Hurricane Harvey to dramatically improve Houston’s defenses against deadly floods.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the project could cost several billion dollars and take several years to complete. It would build a network of deep tunnels to carry water from several of Houston’s waterways, so that they’d be able to keep a 100-year storm event within their banks.

Republican Rep. John Culberson of Houston said this project could be partially funded by Federal Emergency Management Agency hazard mitigation grants.

Commissioners will vote Tuesday, March 27, on whether to pursue a feasibility study to assess the tunnel proposal.

Shared Humanity

Deep tunnels can help but it's gonna take a lot longer than several years to construct anything of consequence. Chicago began construction on a deep tunnel project in 1972. It is projected to be completed in 2029.

Last month, Harris county officials approved more than $100,000 to study the tunnels project, which would cost billions of dollars and take years to construct. The idea has the support of the city’s Republican member of Congress and his Democratic challenger. Elon Musk also quickly chimed in his enthusiasm on behalf of his tunnel-drilling company, because of course he did.https://www.chron.com/news/politics/houston/article/Will-Elon-Musk-save-Houston-12781470.php

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This philosophical clash — build tunnels or plan a careful retreat — is perhaps the first major skirmish pitting climate adaptation against climate mitigation in a major U.S. city. The outcome could set the tone for decades to come. Knowing what we know about human nature and denial, a Texas-sized arms race against the sky feels all but inevitable. ...

So, Houston is looking at building tunnels, my two brain cells stopped fighting for a while... The same Houston with a huge population boom this century, that also brought a lot of people from New Orleans after Katrina, which also contributed to building stuff in the wrong places, dispite the threat from warmer ocean waters, that then lead to three huge floodings in 18 months, including a self sustaining Harvey? The remedy for warmer oceans, stronger storms and rising sea levels is to build tunnels?

A sudden flash of memory; an interview with Tilman Fertitta from last year. Snipping out the part that my brain still can't translate.

Yeah, those are famous. 59 pillars of 500 tons of reinforced concrete each, four 14,000 hp turbines to send the water into a river. Total amount of concrete and emissions? Who knows.Japan har less than 3 sq km per 1,000 people, the US over ten times more space.Adaptation is not mitigation.

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Omnia mirari, etiam tritissima.-Science is a jealous mistress and takes little account of a man's feelings.

California’s next megaflood would be worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas

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Worse than the 1906 earthquake. Worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas. Worse than every wildfire in California history, combined. The world’s first trillion-dollar natural disaster.

A wintertime megaflood in California could turn out to be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history by far, and we are making it much more likely, according to an alarming study published this week in Nature Climate Change.

The odds are good that such a flood will happen in the next 40 years, the study says. By the end of the century, it’s a near certainty. (And then another one hits, and another — three such storms are possible by 2100). By juicing the atmosphere, extreme West Coast rainstorms will happen at five times their historical rate, if humanity continues on roughly a business-as-usual path, the new research predicts. ...

“We’re very concerned that the flooding will be unprecedented beyond even the 2008 and 1973 floods,” Clifford said in an interview. “So we’ve issued a recommended evacuation … The evidence suggests that this is going to be worse (flooding) and longer.”

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I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Above-average temperatures and extremely high snowpacks lead to flooding; predictions of one-in-100-year streamflow rates for rivers near several British Columbia communities, including Kelowna, Spences Bridge, Houston and Smithers.

A privately–owned embankment dam located near the township of Solai, Nakuru County, in Kenya's Rift Valley burst amid heavy rains on 9 May 2018, killing at least 48 people.The dam was one of seven belonging to Mansukul Patel on the private property of his 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) commercial rose farm and business, Solai Roses.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patel_Dam_failure

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People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

...All this rain doesn’t just mean bigger floods, it also means more unpredictable floods. According to Eric Waage, the director of emergency management in Hennepin County, Minnesota, flooding in the state used to come primarily in early spring, when snow from the preceding winter melts and rivers rise. This kind of flooding from snowmelt can be dramatic, but the time between when the precipitation falls as snow and when it melts and pours into rivers as water allows for some advance planning (more snow in the winter means more water later). Recently, however, the state has had to worry more about flash flooding because intense rainstorms can arise with little or no warning. “It’s getting weird,” said Waage.

During one 2016 storm that resulted in parts of Minnesota qualifying for federal disaster assistance, concentrated storm bands over populated areas dropped nearly 10 inches of rain in just a few hours. Even away from any creeks or rivers, water coursed through neighborhoods and into basements. Flash flooding like this “can catch you off guard,” Waage said, making it harder to warn people or make preparations.

Municipalities try to prepare for emergencies like these ahead of time, and they rely on precipitation estimates to know what to plan for. Erin Wenz, a Minneapolis-based engineer, uses precipitation models to help municipalities decide where and how to build while taking into account the possibility of extreme precipitation. “We need to change people’s expectations of what is normal,” she said. ...

Damn. Ellicott City is just a few miles from me. The 2016 flood was traumatic for the town and people I know. Odd that I'd read about today's episode here.Personally, just a really rainy day here.Geography is destiny, I guess.

That's six miles from me. In my neighborhood, not so much as a fallen branch.Geography is destiny.Similar destruction happened 2 years ago, same exact neighborhood devastated.Historically, it's happened a couple of times in the 20th century.Just last week, I vaguely recall a news story about some kind of proposed plan for flood mitigation in that area. The climate, and subsequent weather events, is changing faster than our governmental bodies can react.I wonder if that charming, quaint neighborhood might need to be converted to park land. Pity.